


Coda of a Love Song

by Mythril (fantacination)



Series: #SheithWeek2k16 [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, I want you to lead voltron, Keith cannot deal and deals at the same time, Keith leads voltron, M/M, Sad Keith (Voltron), Sheith Week 2016, Sheith Week 2016: Hurt/Comfort, So so much angst, Voltron Fam is Fam, What-If, and some death, canon AU, dead or alive you can't take this ship out of my hands, leader!keith is kinda fail but he tries and that kinda works out, mostly the aftermath bit, there is some violence resulting in some gore, why is sad keith a thing ao3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-22
Updated: 2016-10-22
Packaged: 2018-08-23 17:13:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,764
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8335789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fantacination/pseuds/Mythril
Summary: Sheith Week Day 1: Hurt/Comfort Shiro dies and Keith takes up arms to lead Voltron to victory.





	

_Keith._

 

_I want you to lead Voltron._

 

Keith died, that day.

 

In bits and pieces, the rest of him followed. The parts that smiled. That tried to tell jokes.

 

Like Shiro’s stiffened metal arm, flaking ash where it had fallen against Keith’s neck, sliding from his face. Like the last flicker of warmth from Shiro’s upturned face in the hollow of his palm.

 

Like the scream that curdled in his throat, rank with grief, he died.

 

And he was sustained, in vengeance.

 

“Get to your Lions,” Keith barked, his voice carrying like a thousand voices wailing. “Don’t just stand there! Run!”

 

Shiro was in his arms, broken and cold. Purple veins traced up his neck from the Galran essence that had slowly been poisoning his system since he blew up his arm to allow the team to escape.

 

The body was cooling, a shell of the man who’d always come back. Now he couldn’t, anymore.

 

“But--” Lance began, the bravest. Hunk had fallen to his knees. Pidge was frozen.

 

“Zarkon is coming! Do you want him to have died for nothing?”

 

He hefted Shiro’s body, tried to run, but it was too heavy, metal scrap dragging. The terrain was too muddy. The soldiers had gotten in range to fire. A shot glanced over his shoulder, singing his armor.

 

Was it too much, he screamed at the universe, soundless, to ask that he be allowed this one last piece?

 

“Keith! Keith, come on! This was _your_ idea!”

 

Keith let Shiro’s body go and ran.

 

Because he couldn’t let it be for nothing.

 

 _Keith_ had had nothing. No family. No friends. No life.

 

And then Shiro had gone into that emptiness. He’d been a bright star, filling him with warmth. With purpose. With the gentle, small things that smoothed away all the edges that had grown into Keith’s skin.

 

But now Shiro was gone and Keith had nothing again.

 

Not Shiro’s dogtags, taken when he’d been enslaved. Not his pictures, all tucked in precious boxes back on earth. Not his voice, in the vast emptiness of sound in space, like death expanded.

 

All he had was this. All he had was Shiro’s legacy.

 

And he’d collapse the universe before he let anyone take it.

 

The Red in him wanted out. Wanted to charge in and punch Zarkon’s reptilian face.

 

But there’s a small, so small, spark, the light of a distant star, that tells him: No.

 

And if this legacy the last thing he can have of Shiro, then he’ll hold onto it for as long as he can.

 

He jumped into the rickety escape pod as it started to take off, hauled in by Hunk’s soft hands.

 

“Go!” He breathed out, half-in. The Galran base shrank behind them.

 

=

 

Getting to the Castle was a waking nightmare and he remembered it in bursts. Allura coming to get them. The tears that spilled from Hunk’s face, followed in short order by the others. Big, childish bawls. Sniffling, ugly moans of grief. Thin, nasally heaves.

 

Keith stood among them, dry as desert sand.

 

The dead didn’t cry.

 

The dead remembered.

 

Again, again, his soul drawn and quartered. When he woke in his bed, a second pillow clutched in his hands. When he woke to dust storms in his mouth on a clear arid day. When he woke and saw the shreds of sheets clutched in his fists.

 

Again and again.

 

Each memory was a hot coal on freezing fingers, hungrily yearned for, broiling his flesh to the bone.

 

The dead didn’t have a use for tears or for pain. For sorrow or for anger.

 

The dead were buried. He heaped black ash over red-hot embers. He _focused_.

 

His footsteps on the ramp rattled like the march of an army.

 

He walked up to his Lion and said: “Let me in.”

 

The Black Lion’s head dropped, it’s maw opened.

 

The Black Paladin walked in.

 

=

 

“You can’t be serious!”

 

“We can’t form Voltron anyway, that won’t change even if you take the Black Lion!”

 

“How can you do that? How can you stand there in those clothes while Shiro’s _dead_?”

 

“I wouldn’t stand here if he wasn’t,” Keith told Lance, a scant inch from his grief-twisted face.

 

Shiro would’ve calmed him down. Would’ve offered comfort. A hug. He’d say something wise or maybe a little stern, and it would be exactly what Lance needed.

 

But Keith was a banked fire. He was an impostor in the clothes of his dead love.

 

If he touched Lance, he thought he might burn.

 

Lance shoved him back, indignant. “You are _unbelievable_ , it’s like you don’t even care! Were you just waiting for him to drop dead? I would _never_ follow you!”

 

Keith grabbed his shirt before he turned away, yanking Lance down so hard his knees buckled underneath him. Keiths clenched fist held him up.

 

“I care enough to protect the only thing Shiro cared about! All of you-” he swept his gaze across the paladins, hot. “He cared about all of you enough to _die_ . He cared about Voltron so much that instead of his own life he was thinking about who was going to _lead_ it! He cared about the Universe being safe and peaceful and _free_. About your families that live only because Zarkon hasn’t finished pillaging the galaxy! About a dream that you all will see them and live to have your own!”

 

“I’m not Shiro. I’m never going to be Shiro. Shiro’s dead.” Keith inhaled shakily.

 

“Follow me because Shiro was better than us all and he chose me. Because I swear we’ll win if you trust me. I had nothing when I scraped into the Garrison. I had nothing when I wandered into the desert to find the Blue Lion. I have nothing left, not here, not on earth, but this mission and I _do not_ fail.”

 

He closed his eyes. “Please.”

 

Hunk reached out first, his empathy like a blanket. “I’m scared,” he said. “ I don’t know what to do. But we’re brothers. We’re paladins. I’ll follow you.”

 

“I’m not giving up,” Pidge said shakily. “We form Voltron.”

 

Lance stared at them, struck uncharacteristically dumb.

 

“I--I can’t.” His shoulders hunched. Head hung, he left.

 

“He needs time,” Allura said gently.

 

“Do you?” Keith said, because it took five to form Voltron.

 

Allura’s hand closed over his wrist. “I suppose I’ll have to learn how to tame a Lion.”

 

The weight on Keith’s shoulders eased. Just a little.

 

=

 

He found Lance, later, staring at the stars.

 

“It’s not like I hate you,” the Blue Paladin started, the moment Keith’s footsteps halted. “I mean, I still don’t like your face and all that, but I don’t want to replace Shiro, you know? He was… my hero. He even went and died like a hero. Back home, you’d hang up his jersey and retire his number, right? Nobody’ll ever be able to be him. Not to us.”

 

The space of a breath is a yawning chasm Keith had never known how to fill.

 

“But I can get on board with kicking Zarkon’s ass. And that’s probably all that’s in that stupid, stubborn mullethead of yours right now, so I can count on that, right?”

 

“Not everything,” Keith said quietly, truthfully. “I’m going to get all of you out of this alive.” Shiro wouldn’t want any of this otherwise.

 

=

 

They started with targeting the supply routes again. They picked off a few and ran, taking what they could and ruining the rest.

 

Slowly, the team came together again. Red was a phantom limb, but from here, Keith’s head was cold. Cold and merciless, tempered only by that bright spark, tattooed behind his eyelids.

 

Being in Black’s cockpit, it was almost like he was next to Shiro’s heartbeat if he closed his eyes.

 

It opened him to things he had barely started to think about. He could see the battle like a map laid out on Shiro’s old desk. Shiro’s breath at his ear when he explained. His delight when Keith arrived at the conclusion barely two sentences in.

 

_“You’re more amazing than you know.”_

 

_“Or maybe I just had a really good teacher.”_

 

He wasn’t Shiro.

 

But little by little, he piled the parts of himself that belonged to Shiro. The best parts The ones he’d never known he had until he’d met him.

 

And something in Black responded. Keith found more and more that they’d scarcely begun to imagine while Allura courted allies and the team charmed natives, he was possessed with a single-minded dedication to learning to use everything Voltron could offer.

 

When Zarkon came, they were ready.

 

This time, Keith met him with the team and an alliance at his wings. This time, Keith knew what every Black Paladin knew and more. This time, Keith avenged.

 

“And so you win. But tell me, what did you win?” Zarkon asked. “Now, you will exist, an empty husk, no battles, no enemy for all that anger that burns under your skin. What will you live for?”

 

And he was right. What remained to him if he cannot fight? What return was there to a home that was a husk? Keith’s fate was to burn, to shine with his borrowed light and to disappear.

 

Shiro’s legacy was safe. Zarkon was dying at his knees. In the distance, their allied ships were winning. Allura would lead the Voltron Alliance into a bright new future. Hunk, Pidge, and Lance would go home. Pidge with her family.

 

He was bleeding. He was pretty sure there was a hole in his gut in the imprint of Zarkon’s fist and he’d lost all feeling in his left arm long ago.

 

Yes. This was the right time. He hefted the black bayard. He didn’t know if he believed in an afterlife. If God had sent him an angel, they’d taken him back.

 

But oblivion was sweeter than the bleakness that stared in front of him.

 

He brought his sword down on Zarkon’s neck, lopping it off. He watched it float away from the body, severed.

 

Keith anchored it under the fallen emperor’s armor.

 

He dragged himself to the Lion, wanting to end next to it. “I’m sorry. I hope your next pilot is a lot better than me,” he told her quietly, letting her go.

 

He focused, one last time, on that pinpoint of light. The way Shiro’s face had looked, under warm sunlight. The way his eyes crinkled when he smiled with easy grace. The sound of his voice as he called his name.

 

_Keith._

 

He’d died that day. Now, he could rest.

 

_Keith!_

**Author's Note:**

>  **A/N:** *cries while typing the whole thing*  
> me: I don't want to write angst.  
> also me: *writes angst*
> 
> Ambiguous ending. Who, exactly, is calling Keiths name? :’D


End file.
